It is all about the people

Riding an Indian motorcycle from Alice Springs to Darwin recently, Brad Foster found the people as captivating as the landscape.

From my travel experiences it’s the people you meet that is equally as enjoyable as what you see and do.

And that seems to count double in the Northern Territory where hospitality oozes out of people like the litres of perspiration did on me over the 2000km ride.

For 10 days my friend Nigel Collin and I were mesmerised at the generosity and friendliness of the people we met and interviewed for Nigel’s Ingenious Oz Project.

In Alice we enjoyed a few free beers courtesy of Earth Sanctuary’s Dan Falzon, and were invited to have a home-cooked meal by another contact we made in Alice. The red wine went down far too easy on that night.

At Barrow Creek, 280kms north of Alice Springs – population 11 - we were told that a big tourist bus had stopped over that day and supplies were a little low for dinner but chef would rustle us up something. Which she most certainly did.

At a motel in Tennant Creek the young lady behind the desk offered to put our motorcycles in a secure parking area because they looked expensive.

At the awe-inspiring Devil’s Marbles, an elderly couple in an RV told me where Nigel was when we got separated and we had no phone reception.

In Katherine, the lovely owners of Katherine Outback Experience, Golden Guitar winner Tom Curtain and his wife Annabel McLarty, availed themselves for an interview at short notice and were in no hurry for us to be done.

And finally, on our arrival in Darwin, the general manger of the Novotel Darwin, Zayne Boon, gave us a super special rate for an additional night’s accommodation, and the co-owners of Humpty Doo Barramundi Farm, Julii Tyson and Bob Richards insisted on showing Nigel and I a Darwin sunset and buying us dinner.

It’s no wonder the Territory’s popularity as a tourism destination continues to grow.